There’s also the issue of “conquering” versus “settling.” The English, at least, seemed to be more in the business of settling than conquering. The conquering tended to start after the disputes broke out. Then you’re in a vae victis situation, especially when there have been atrocities.

Today we have millions of Mexicans flooding over our borders and settling in the US. We don’t say they are conquering the US even though some of these settlers proclaim that they are reclaiming land that is rightfully theirs.

I don’t think any government actually did give back any land, but that doesn’t mean there was no debate. It just means the imperialists won the debate.

We started this discussion with the question of whether we have grounds to criticize people back then, or if we’re applying anachronistic standards if we do that. I see now that we’ve been arguing at cross purposes. My standard is that we can criticize them without anachronism if at least some people back at that time saw that this was wrong and said so. If the rulers didn’t listen to those people, they’re accountable for refusing to listen. But your standard (and Allen’s) is whether anyone had ever actually listened before. Because no ruler had ever actually made policy based on the view we now hold, it’s not their fault that they didn’t.

I think the problem with your view is selection bias, because you’re only asking whether people who took land then gave it back, and not at whether there was anyone who didn’t take land in the first place. Obviously the only people who are in a position to give land back are people who took land in the first place, so from the start you’re only including the people who have made their choice to follow imperialism rather than justice. The point is that they did, in fact, make a choice – and they knew what they were doing.

And, as you point out, the Europenas certainly did not voluntarily give back reconquered land to the Ottomans. And even that situation is not completely on point because the beconquered land was most likely viewed as being rightfully European.

So, I’m not sure the precedent (and thanks for doing that research) of a European to European giveback gets us all the way there. Especially, since in the Italian War case, at least one purpose of France’s taking and returning of conquered territory was to reclaim Calais which France thought belonged to them in the first place.

In any event, for these reasons I think the precedent is distinguishable.

A friend has pointed me to the example of the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis at the end of the Italian War. France gave back some territory it had taken, and kept some – most notably Calais, a city on the continental side of the English Channel that had belonged to England since 1347, but had belonged to France before that.

Ken: I think the real issue with your question is that you specified examples of European powers giving back land to non-European powers. Suppose it was the case that European powers often gave back each other’s land at the end of their wars with each other, but they always played for keeps when they went to war with non-Europeans? That would certainly provide a basis for criticizing their hypocrisy, wouldn’t it? I would think it would provide more of a basis, not less.

Let me do a little brushing up on this before I get back to you, but I believe it was in fact the case – at least in, say, the 16th century – that when European powers went to war with each other over anything other than disputed claims to a piece of land (and most of their wars were not about land disputes) they did give back the territory they took at the end of the war. Earlier, before national bounadries were starting to emerge, that was not the case – but before national boundaries emerged we can’t really talk about one “nation” going to war with another anyway.